This is a figure skating blog. It covers a big part of the major figure skating's competitions and gives technical explanations and focuses on athletes.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Yuna Kim's short program analysis

Yuna Kim's competitive return is one of the most popular topics in the figure skating news and it won't stop being so until her appaerance at World Championships where she will lastly compete against her biggest rivals. In the two events she attended this year, she looked pretty strong and confident about her undiscussed abilities. Since she hasn't skated in an international senior A competition yet, I will try here to analize her short program's potentials in a world-wide sphere.

JUMPING CONTENT

Without a doubt, Yuna owns the highest technical content in the ladies' field. Indeed, with nailing a triple lutz-triple toe, a triple flip and a double axel she gets a base value of 19,73, while a Mao Asada's performance with a triple axel (assuming she will go for it at Worlds), a triple flip-double loop and a triple loop would get 21,21.

Moreover, as she is a consistant skater, she usually gets high grades of execution on her jumps. Even when she doesn't nail her hardest jumpstriple lutz, she is prepared enough for being able to place a triple flip-triple toe out of steps as she did at Korean Nationals.

The double axel taken from a ina bauer and placed in the second half of the program assure her a higher grade of execution (for the difficult transition going in) and the bonus points.

LEVEL ELEMENTS

Yuna is slightly less strong in her spins than she used to be before 2011.
The flying camel spin and the combo spin should receive a level four if correctly executed (did receive level three at NRW Trophy) but the layback spin is scheduled to be a level three since Yuna doesn't get a Biellman position at the moment (despite having it in her technical package for years) and that doesn't allow her to get the maximum points for it.

PROGRAM COMPONENTS
Yuna received very high components scores at both NRW Trophy and Korean Nationals around 35 and actually she could get them even in an A competition. It is sometimes difficult to understand how components will be given, as they change competition from competition, judge from judge and as sometimes they are based more on skaters' reputation rather than the actual execution. If predictions on execution, performance or interpretation can't be made, as the are effected by what the skater does in that right moment, the richness of Yuna's choreography and transitions should remain unchanged.
In her short program Yuna occupies the entire area of the rink (skates board to board) doing elements in different places and moving following curves (not doing too straight lines). She does different types of turns and steps between the elements, without doing too much strokes, and her transitioning arms and head movements are pretty intricated.